Madeleine Akrich

Presentation

Madeleine Akrich has devoted most of her work to the sociology of technology, and specifically to users. She has been seeking for further understanding of how innovators, designers and promoters of technical devices construct representations of targeted users and how, by inscribing those representations in the technical and organizational choices that they make, they produce «scripts» framing possible relations between users and devices. She has also studied how users appropriate technologies and how these technologies redefine their relations with their environment. For several years, her work has been centred on medicine. In collaboration with Bernike Pasveer she compared obstetrical practices in France and in the Netherlands, two countries where the techniques are used totally differently. She shows how the ways in which women experience pregnancy and childbirth is related to these specific sets of practices. With Cécile Méadel, Madeleine Akrich has been observing Internet discussion groups pertaining to health – patient as well as professional groups. Her current research is about the role of consumer and patient movements in the field of health. Together with Vololona Rabeharisoa, she coordinates a European project on the role of patient organisations in the production and circulation of knowledge.